Ming Lee Tang, an assistant professor of chemistry at the University of California, Riverside, has received a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to continue her work on developing hybrid organic-inorganic materials that have applications in health care and the solar industry.

Tang is one of 84 U.S. scientists selected for the grant through the DOEs Office of Science's Early Career Research Program. She will receive approximately $150,000 in each of the next five years for her project titled “Splitting photons: Singlet fission in nanocrystal-molecule hybrid structures.”

Tang, who has been at UC Riverside since 2012, is working to design, make, and characterize hybrid organic-inorganic nanocrystal-based materials for biomedical imaging and the solar industry.

“I am excited about exploring the possibility of using quantum dots and organics to extract as much energy as possible from sunlight and circumvent the losses in existing solar cells,” Tang said. “I also want to thank my research group for all their hard work leading up to this award.”

Now in its ninth year, the award program is designed to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years. To be eligible, a researcher must be an untenured, tenure-track assistant, or associate professor at a U.S. academic institution or a full-time employee at a DOE national laboratory who received a Ph.D. within the past 10 years.

The 84 awardees were selected from a large pool of applicants based on peer review by outside scientific experts.